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I have taken a full time design position at Gensler in San Francisco. A fantastic opportunity to be a vital component of a great design team, extending Gensler’s brand in both print and developing new content for iPad touch screen environments. More on that later.

I was a founding employee of blurb.com in 2005. It was incredible having the rare opportunity to develop a well designed product and community from the ground up. We were designing and developing in smart efficient cycles that allowed us to grow quickly-but not too quickly. The core attributes that we developed in the first months still ring true today. We were driven by good design, aimed to create a friendly, easy to use experience that would allow many people/users to design, publish, promote, and share, books & stories like never before.

We knew if we could do that right, we would create a platform for passionate users. That passionate group has become a very lively community globally. Eventually, that community then shaped what Blurb became. Popular user requests became features. Our biggest challenge at Blurb was never a shortage of good ideas, but development time to create them. Of course, we naturally wanted every good feature and functionality at once, but this led to good debates.

Wesabe is an online money management tool with a focus on helping users make good financial decisions through the collective intelligence of the Wesabe community. I was brought in work with Wesabe’s internal team to design conceptual directions for new homepage and visually simplify their existing offering.

A series of concepts developed focused on bringing Wesabe users to the forefront, sharing their passions and successes, with the idea of inspiring others who want to make financial changes themselves.

Part of the conversation focused on trying to integrate user photography along with inspirational quotes and thoughts. Wesabe took the concepts back in house and finished the directions themselves. Here is their current homepage:

The original site [below] did not reflect the ease of use of Wesabe’s tools, nor did it really let you have a sense who is using Wesabe’s tools and why. The new friendly community centered site with clear and simple messaging, has helped Wesabe grow its users and community.

Michelle Kaufmann is an architect that produces very compelling prefabricated houses. Very modern and sustainable. I had a great opportunity to create an in-house design team and with that small group develop a branding system that was very flexible and scaleable. The range of components that I was able to develop makes me feel that I feel successfully expressed a energetic and expressive brand out into the world, from icons and identity, to fund raising and presentation decks. I also designed building site panel wraps that engaged and welcomed an existing community and transportation graphics that wrapped trucks and modules from factory to site. It was a great opportunity to design big and scale up in ways I have not done before.

We had the opportunity to work with photographer Daisann McLane on her first book project titled, Cheap Hotels, a book we packaged and published with Taschen.Daisann McLane writes the Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times Sunday travel section, and is a contributing editor and columnist for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Hardcover, 16.5 x 22.2 cm (6.5 x 8.7 in.), 192 pages. From a design point of view, we loved that this book was simultaneously printed in three languages in the same book: English, German and French. I wish more publishers produced books with multi-lingual audience in mind.

Prefab presents a series of innovative homes and prefab concepts, along with a comprehensive history of prefabricated housing over the last century. Prefab discusses architects, builders, and designers such as Walter Gropius and Philippe Starck, examines the historical precedents from Albert Frey’s Corbusier-inspired Aluminaire house to Kisho Kurokawa’s capsules, and showcases the work of twenty-four contemporary architects and designers who are exploring the myriad possibilities that prefabrication offers for housing of the future.

“Pretty Fabulous: Prefab…provides a much needed look at new ideas in prefabricated housing.” — Architecture magazine, December 2002